The Secret Garden Isolation

The Secret Garden, written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, takes places in India and gloomy Misselthwaite Manor. The protagonist is Mary Lennox, a disagreeable looking child with a selfish attitude. The antagonist is Archibald Craven, Mary’s uncle. He is known as a horrid, disagreeable, hunchback that everyone fears. Some other characters are: Master Colin Craven, who is Mary’s sickly cousin, Dickon Sowerby, who is known as both “a common moor boy” and “a Yorkshire Angel,” Martha Sowerby, who is the housekeeper, and finally a delightful red robin. In The Secret Garden, the conflict is about death, grief and isolation. Mary has been lonely her entire childhood due to lack of attention and then her parents’ deaths. Archibald Craven’s wife has died
Both Mary and Colin were both isolated at one point in the book. It was the secret garden that healed both of them. When Mary’s parents died she did not miss them. For example, in the book it states, “Mary had liked to look at her mother from a distance and she thought her very pretty, but as she knew very little of her she could scarcely have been expected to love her or to miss her very much when she was gone. She did not miss her at all, in fact, and as she was a self- absorbed child she gave her entire thought to herself, as she had always done.” (Chapter 2, Page 9). Mary’s parents never saw her or thought of her, she was always watched over by the care of an Ayah. Similarly, Colin Craven experiences his own form of isolation when his mother dies, he is emotionally abandoned by his father, and then he is sent to live in a room by himself forever because his back is not as strong as normal children. In The Secret Garden, Colin states, “Because I am like this always, ill and having to lie down. My father won’t let people talk me over either. The servants are not allowed to speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan’t live. My father hates to this I may be like him.” (Chapter 13, Pages